In the verse form “Passed On” by Carole Satymurti. the talker tells a narrative about as in a novel of their female parent and how she left them a box of index cards with advice on life when she died. The speaker’s gender seems to be female. In the verse form. the poet presents the subject of turning up and going one’s ain individual through the ripening and credence procedure. She personifies the index cards themselves. comparing them to her female parent. They besides characterize the talker and her female parent and make a temper of unhappiness and yearning. connoting that possibly the female parent has been dead for some clip. but the talker has ne’er genuinely accepted this.
The rubric of the verse form seems to hold three significances. On the one manus. the talker seems to hold grown up since their mother’s passing. As she grows and matures. the cards her female parent left her “seemed to shrivel. ” She would happen parts of the cards “blank. the borders furred. deaf-and-dumb person. whole countries incorrect. or losing. ” There is a certain point in her life in which she realizes that her female parent is non infallible and makes errors merely like everyone else. Whereas earlier in her life she felt like “the universe was boxlike. ” that her female parent had included everything that she would necessitate in this box full of index cards. she might hold had many experiences which her female parent could non hold perceived and hence non written anything about them. This feeling of turning up and going your ain individual may be the significance of the rubric “Passed On. ” The talker has passed up her female parent in footings of adulthood and her female parent can no longer learn her what she was able to before. The decease of her female parent itself may be the significance of “Passed On. ” The talker Tells of firing the index cards. saying. “the fume rose thin and clear. easy blurred. ”
By firing the cards. she is giving herself closing in a symbolic mode. about as though she were cremating her female parent. Earlier. she states that her female parent had “rendered herself down from flesh to paper” and she would “shuffle them to about hear her speak. ” The poet personifies the speaker’s female parent through these cards in order to give the reader a Fuller thought of how much the cards meant to the talker when she was younger and how symbolic an event it is to fire them on the beach. The funeral imagination is farther reinforced by the talker “creating a hollow cairn. ” about to move as a keystone for the cards. symbolically her mother’s funeral topographic point. The concluding possible significance of the rubric “Passed On” is the speaker’s ain ripening. As she grew and started to doubt her mother’s wisdom. inquiring. “Had she known? ” she has “Passed On” her mother’s advice because it is no longer pertinent to her. She has taken all she can from the cards and now can no longer see any existent usage for them.
The female parent is characterized throughout the verse form as a sallow adult female but besides a wise and anticipating adult female. The talker is characterized at first as infantile but finally matures and moves past her immature ways into a wiser. world-wearier individual. The talker saw her mother’s “strength drain. ink-blue. from her finger-ends supplying for a twine of difficult winters//I was seeking non to understand. ” This refers to the many winters in which she has had to care for her female parent. who easy deteriorates. It is besides mentioning to the fact that she did non desire to accept the fact that her female parent is deceasing. and she pretends to non cognize the ground for her female parent making this. Her female parent knows she is deceasing and wants to leave everything she can to her kid so they will non be wholly lost when at last her bosom does halt whipping. The puerility of the talker is presented by her “nagging” her female parent and seeking difficult “not to understand” the winters that she knows she will finally hold to face. It is a really infantile thing to make to see something and seek to feign it isn’t existent merely by coercing oneself non to understand it. It is concealing from the universe and from the truth of the hereafter and the talker does it.
The mother’s eventual impairment is presented in the 4th stanza in a twine of apparently unrelated one to three word phrases. The talker prefaces this by comparing her ain notes to her mother’s “urgent bigotry. loosening clasp. ” Her female parent is apparently stealing into the mindless universe of dotage and she shows it by composing in her index cards that she held in such high importance “infinitives ne’er stating love lecherousness individual issue political relations when don’t hopeless careful trust. ” This evidently makes no sense and serves as a representation of the mother’s “loosening grip” on world. her slow debasement into dotage. This development in the female parent is paralleled with the speaker’s ain ripening. Adding “notes of my own” gives the talker a newfound degree of adulthood ; she feels experienced enough to change the cards herself. Adequate clip has passed for her to derive new experiences that she feels is worthy of being noted and she notes them in these index cards. The speaker’s ripening procedure is finally completed in the symbolic combustion of the cards. She has eventually accepted her mother’s decease and can last without her. The talker provinces. “Then I allow her travel. ” Her ripening is eventually complete ; this is maturity and she has achieved it.
The general temper of the verse form is rather sad. The poet creates this temper by stating of the mother’s despair to complete her undertaking before she dies. She “rendered herself” from the flesh. doing her “strength drain. ” This is all of class being told through the kid of the adult female deceasing and it is really sad to believe of a immature kid holding to witness this in their ain parent at such a immature age. When she was immature. she thought that her parents were supposed to be stones of stableness and strength ; any intimation of failing is a genuinely sad thing to witness. The temper is furthered with the poet’s enunciation. utilizing phrases like “hard winters” and the speaker’s “doubt. ” The talker seems to dislike the fact that she was infantile beforehand and could non associate to her female parent while she was alive. but she can’t alteration that. She eventually accepts the past and resolves to travel on with her life. “let [ ing her female parent ] go” through the combustion of the index cards. This eventual tone of resoluteness comes at a clip in her life when she feels she can eventually travel on.
The poet manages to set forth a big figure of ideas and feelings for the reader. and does so in rather a short figure of lines. Satymurti has added strong emotions in this verse form. and has used enunciation really good. The most of import facets nevertheless. are the symbolism and the imagination in the verse form. Satymurti has many great lines in the verse form. which create really graphic images in the head of the reader. This helps convey the message of traveling on of a immature miss after a long life-time of sorrowing her mother’s decease. The girl at one point is about obsessed with the cards. what they represent and what they mean. This passes as she realises that her female parent did non cognize everything. and non all the things in the box might be right or true. she moves on. she accepts the fact that her female parent is no longer with her and will ne’er be.
